Commentary by Michael Wade on Leadership, Ethics, Management, and Life

Saturday, February 21, 2009

"Anti-Islamic activity" Update

From Islamabad, let us zip a world away to London. Among the growing population of Yorkshire Pakistanis is a fellow called Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He threatened "to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords" if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film "Fitna."

Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested and returned to the Netherlands.

Smith is best known for an inspired change of terminology: last year she announced that henceforth Muslim terrorism (an unhelpful phrase) would be reclassified as "anti-Islamic activity." Seriously. The logic being that Muslims blowing stuff up tends not to do much for Islam's reputation – i.e., it's an "anti-Islamic activity" in the same sense that Pearl Harbor was an anti-Japanese activity.